[OSM-legal-talk] Licence brief/Use Case - final call forcomments

Richard Fairhurst richard at systemeD.net
Wed Oct 15 13:49:10 BST 2008


Peter Miller wrote:

> I am basing my response of the Brief, not the current draft of ODBL (they
> are not that different except in the definition of a Derivative DB), however
> it would be my understanding that if you combined the OSM DB (unaltered)
> with another data-source (the PD one you refer to) then you don't need to
> publish the Derivative DB (because there isn't one) and you don't need to
> publish the Collective DB (because you don't need to do that). In that case
> all you need to do is make a suitable acknowledgement for the OSM Data (and
> any other separate data sources).
>
> Does that make sense?

It might make sense but it's not the case. :)

That's basically because the maps I've drawn are Derivative, not  
Collective. Collective requires "independent works", and the way I've  
used the two sets of data doesn't fulfil that - they're pretty much  
intermingled, and I've edited one to work better with the other. The  
same would go for your village example.

(If you just got an OSM base map and plonked some POI icons on it,  
though, chances are it'd be Collective, in _exactly_ the same way that  
we permit mashups these days under CC-BY-SA.)

So there is a Derivative Database: the agglomeration of OSM data and  
my stuff. Whether or not this is ever stored in a database management  
system is immaterial in the eyes of the law, it's still a database.

So ODBL 4.6 says I need to make the Derivative Database available. And  
all I need to do for that ("a copy in machine readable form") is take  
my Illustrator files, remove the styling, and because I'm feeling nice  
(though no compulsion), I'll export it in a format, like .dxf, for  
which lots of translators are available.

Good, isn't it?

cheers
Richard





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